ANN: SUMMON 1.8.8 Released: 2D Visualization prototyping and scripting

[rasmus]

SUMMON 1.8.8

SUMMON is a python extension module that provides rapid prototyping of
2D visualizations.  By heavily relying on the python scripting
language, SUMMON allows the user to rapidly prototype a custom
visualization for their data, without the overhead of a designing a
graphical user interface or recompiling native code. By simplifying
the task of designing a visualization, users can spend more time on
understanding their data.

SUMMON is designed to be a fast interface for developing interactive
scene graphs for OpenGL. Although python libraries already exist for
accessing OpenGL, python is relatively slow for real-time interaction
with large visualizations (trees with 100,000 leaves, sparse matrices
with a million non-zeros, etc.). Therefore, with SUMMON all real-time
interaction is handled with compiled native C++ code (via extension
module). Python is only executed in the construction and occasional
interaction with the visualization. This arrangement provides the best
of both worlds.

SUMMON 1.8.8 comes with the following features:
    * a demo large sparse matrix visualizer (ideal for visualizing
      clusterings)
    * a demo tree visualizer
    * Python C++ extension module
    * Fast OpenGL graphics
    * Drawing arbitrary points, lines, polygons, text with python
      scripting
    * Binding inputs (keyboard, mouse, hotspots) to any python
function
    * Separate threads for python and graphics (allows use of python
      prompt and responsive graphics at the same time)
    * Transparently handles graphics event loop, scrolling, zooming,
      text layout (auto-clipping, scaling, alignment), and click
      detection; allowing you to focus on viewing your data
    * SVG output (also GIF/PNG/JPG/etc via ImageMagick)
    * Cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OS/X)
    * And lots of examples for how to prototype your own custom 2D
      visualizations

Web site and download:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/rasmus/summon/

Videos:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/rasmus/summon/index.shtml#videos